Honestly, the standard job application process is a complete dumpster fire. You spend three hours tailoring a resume, upload it to a portal that looks like it was designed in 1998, and then wait for an automated rejection email that usually hits your inbox at 3:00 AM. It's soul-crushing. Most people just accept it as "the way things are." But Kareem Abukhadra isn't most people.
He's the guy who looked at the "Apply Now" button and decided it was a trap.
Kareem Abukhadra is the founder of Relentless, a company that has basically weaponized cold emailing to help job seekers bypass HR filters and land interviews at places like Amazon, Meta, and Zillow. But he didn't start as a "career guru." He was just a kid from Columbia University who realized that being smart wasn't enough to get noticed in a crowded market.
The McKinsey Pivot You Didn't See Coming
Before he was scaling a seven-figure business, Kareem was on the "prestige" track. He landed a gig at McKinsey & Company as a talent strategy consultant. For most people, that's the finish line. You get the vest, the travel points, and the LinkedIn clout.
But Kareem had this weird, nagging obsession with social interaction and systems.
He actually deferred his McKinsey start date to try and build something of his own. It’s a move that would make most parents sweat. He spent the early pandemic days experimenting with video platforms to fight social isolation and running a non-profit called Forgotten Neighbors. He was interviewing homeless individuals, trying to give a voice to people society usually ignores.
This wasn't just "charity work." It was a masterclass in human psychology. He learned how to get on someone's level, literally crouching down to talk to people on the street, and how to ask the one specific question that triggers a real response.
The 30-Interview Month
When the time came for his own job search, Kareem didn't want to play the lottery. He applied his "systems thinking" to the outreach process. He figured out that if you send a hyper-personalized, concise, and compelling email—what he calls the 3 C's—to the right person, the "rules" of recruitment disappear.
He didn't just get a job. He got 30 interviews in a single month.
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People started asking him how he did it. That's when Relentless was born. The concept is simple but the execution is technical: automate the boring parts of the job search (finding leads, sending emails) so the candidate can focus on actually talking to people.
What most people get wrong about cold emailing:
- They're too long. Nobody wants to read your life story in an intro email.
- They're too vague. "I'd love to learn more" is a boring call to action.
- They lack "Social Proof." Kareem leverages brand names like Columbia or YC and hard metrics to signal competence instantly.
He’s kind of obsessed with "Inbox Zero" and "No-code" automation. If a task can be handled by a Zapier workflow or a Mailshake sequence, Kareem isn't doing it manually. It’s that ruthless efficiency that helped him bootstrap Relentless to a 7-figure run rate while on an O1 visa.
It's Not Just About Resumes
If you look at his background, there's a pattern of "breaking rules." At Columbia, he once cold-emailed 60,000 students. His Gmail got banned (obviously), but he reached 5,000 people and scaled a user base to 2,000 in weeks.
He’s a big believer in "Doing > Thinking."
Kareem often talks about how the mind isn't a testing ground. You can't think your way into a successful business or a dream job. You have to test your ideas against reality. Sometimes reality tells you that your email copy sucks. Sometimes it tells you that your business model is flawed. He’s been through both.
The "Relentless" Strategy for 2026
So, what does this mean for you? If you’re still clicking "Easy Apply" on LinkedIn, you’re basically competing with 500 other people and a robot. Kareem’s whole philosophy is about "un-bottlenecking" yourself.
He suggests a few things that actually work:
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- Target one specific role. Writing a "general" resume is the fastest way to get ignored.
- Use metrics. Don't say you're "good at sales." Say you hit 120% of your quota for three quarters straight.
- Automate the outreach. Use tools to find the email of the actual hiring manager, not the HR "info@" inbox.
Kareem Abukhadra has basically turned the job search into a sales funnel. It's a bit cold, sure. It’s very "tech-bro" in its efficiency. But when the alternative is five months of "ghosting" from recruiters, a little bit of automation starts to look like a superpower.
To get started with this approach, stop polishing your resume and start finding the people who actually have the power to hire you. Draft an email that is under five sentences, highlights one major win, and asks for a 10-minute chat. Then, do it again fifty times. That's the "Relentless" way.